Love, Loss, Long Beach

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ISBN: 9781543967418

Aces never fall, they may slip, but they never fall. And I’m an Ace, and that’s that!

~Trucker’s Mantra

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: A MOON WITHOUT MELODY

CHAPTER 2: DEVIL'S CANYON

CHAPTER 3: FOLLOWING RAY

CHAPTER 4: BLACK WIDOWS AND SODA POP

CHAPTER 5: THE CROW, THE JEW, AND THE BLUE EYED NAZI NURSE

CHAPTER 6: A DARK DAY ON HEWITT STREET

CHAPTER 7: THE ORANGE GROVES ARE HAUNTED

CHAPTER 8: GOLDEN BOY, BRASS MAN

CHAPTER 9: STARS & STRIPES

CHAPTER 10: THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE

CHAPTER 11: THE LBC

CHAPTER 12: ANGELS & ORANGES

CHAPTER 13: THE DEN OF INIQUITY

CHAPTER 14: THE TRUCK STOPS HERE

CHAPTER 15: ONE THING I OWE YOU IS THE TRUTH

CHAPTER 16: 420 AT THE FUCK SHACK

CHAPTER 17: PAWNING GOLD RINGS IN HELL

CHAPTER 18: FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU, FOOL ME FIVE TIMES; I'M A FUCKIN JERK

CHAPTER 19: VISITING WITH GHOSTS

CHAPTER 20: THE BEGUILING CHARMS OF LIZA MORA

CHAPTER 1

A MOON WITHOUT MELODY

It was just another yellow line down the middle of my face. Broken every second, like grains of sand dripping from an hourglass. And the dark, just as thick and murky as tar, suffocating what was left of my mind. The hot, black wind pouring into my window and melting my tired eyes shut. A desert so dark, that stars feared to shine there. Only the weak and flickering headlights of my Peterbilt, I call her the Gray Wolf, had the only focused light on that goddamn yellow line, streaming from the top of my sights, to the bottom, under my chin and out the back of my neck, a piercing, relentless, fractured, tormenting line, into the utter black…the endless black.

The exhaust stacks of my tractor, sparking and bellowing smoke as I wearily smash my foot on the accelerator, out of anger, out of desperation, at the thought of all the miles still left ahead of me. Because it didn’t end after you finally docked your trailer for the night and went home. It never ended. It was a few hours of restless sleep; followed by more endless road, more empty loading docks and alleyways, more boredom, more loneliness, more heat, glare, noise, traffic, smog…waste.

I don’t know why I decided to pursue a job skill that my father (a veteran of the road himself) explicitly warned me to steer clear of, but I started at the highest and most dangerous level of difficulty.

I was in a band called The Slanderin. We were, for all intents and purposes, a very well received and widely celebrated act. For a time, we were able to afford an albeit, low rent, though free wheeling lifestyle. We held sporadic, part time employment. The rest of our income came from performing locally and touring around the country, mostly up and down the west coast, throughout the southwest, and in just about every state in the Western Continental Divide. I was able to pay my rent, fill my refrigerator, buy a tour van, and even afford a lockout rehearsal space, solely with what we were earning as performers. It was pretty luxurious, in its own small way. More than what a million other bands were ever expected to accomplish, though nowhere near the stratosphere of the most successful bands. We were somewhere in the middle. Well… the low middle anyway.  

Our rehearsal space was in a large six-story facility that sat next to the 7th street Bridge in Boyle Heights. A good many bands from the L.A. area, large and small, were also practicing there regularly. Our space was on the top floor and looked out over the rolling hills, tall palms and old Victorian villas of East Los Angeles. The 6th street Bridge, just to the left of our view, stretching across the L.A. River, its arches lit with the orange light of fragile, dusty, old street lamps. We could go down there whenever we saw fit and practiced as late and loudly as we wanted. On restless evenings, I would go by myself and plug my 335 Epiphone Sunburst Dot, semi hollow body, into my 4-10’s Fender Hotrod Deluxe amp, and blast the doors off the joint, eking out, whittling down and fine-tuning song ideas, late into the summer night. Things were pretty easy going and like I said, luxurious, at least for the likes of our motley crew. But then I got greedy…

We shared our rehearsal space to save money. The band we split the rent with was a veteran act called Calavera, which is the Spanish word for skeleton.

They were loading in for their scheduled rehearsal time; we had just finished and were loading out. I was talking with my drummer about looking for a solid job somewhere that would pay well, and still allow for a flexible schedule, where I could plan for tours if we got booked on one. 

Where the hell you gonna find something like that? asked my drummer, Mauricio.

Well, Ray said that the guys on the movie sets he works on in the Teamster’s union, get several weeks off a year and just collect unemployment for the weeks they don’t work. I hear their benefits are pretty stellar, too, 

Just then, Raul, Calaveras’s rhythm guitar player, who had been eavesdropping on our conversation, chimed in with an enthusiastic zeal…

Hey man, you want to learn how to drive trucks? he asked.

Well, I’m thinking about it. My old man was a truck driver,

Well, if you come work for me, I’ll put you through truck driving school. You can pay me back slowly out of your paycheck every week until it’s all paid off. I’ll teach you how to tow big rigs, you can take off any time you need to play shows or tour, and I’ll pay you twenty five bucks an hour,

That was more money per hour than I had ever made. More than any of the guys in the band had ever made. More than any of the guys in that room had ever made. More than most of the people in the whole fucking building ever made, it would be safe to say.

I gave it some thought for a second, considered my options, which, lets face it, were few and far between, decided to make a proactive and decisive decision to improve my lot in life, offered Raul my hand, gave him the nod, shook on it, and agreed to meet him at his yard in City Terrace, the following night.

It was rainy, cold and windy as I pulled up to the small garage that housed the service trucks and the wrecker. A wrecker is a term that people in the logistics game use for a heavy-duty tow truck, the kind that tow tractor-trailers and large box trucks. They’re also utilized for up-righting cars and trucks that have turned over in accidents, winch and recovery, basically a break down lorry. I parked my car and walked up to the front door. I heard a loud voice respond to my knock…

WHO THE FUCK IS IT?!

Um, hey, sorry to disturb you. I was looking for Raul, I said to the closed door, lit underneath by a florescent blue-white light. Just then, the door swung open abruptly. A tall, pale, thin and grease covered wretch stood leering at me from inside, his cold blue eyes, suspicious, tired, and frightened. The room inside appeared to be his living quarters. It was a single twin bed, white sheets, spotted here and there with grease stains, centerfolds of nude women spreading their cunts adorned a few spaces on the walls, newspapers and beer cans scattered across the floor, and fast food wrappers, covered in ketchup and melted cheese stuck to them, littered the perimeter of the room. The corkwood drop ceiling was water stained and cracking, and a pair of very loud, ultra bright, halogen bulbs, buzzing overhead, illuminated the whole ghastly mess.

Raul ain’t here. I don’t know where the fuck he is either! snapped the wretch.

That’s okay, he said to meet him here. He knows we’re meeting up,

I don’t know anything about that either! replied the grease covered ghoul, slamming the door in my face. I walked around the garage and stood in front of the chain link fence where the wrecker was parked under a large tree. It was a red Peterbilt, which reminded me of my father. He owned a red Pete himself when I was a small boy. I’d watch him in the early evening, in his cowboy hat and boots, smoking Marlborough Reds, while he washed and polished it to a pristine, impeccable shine.

This Pete was far from the kind of perfection and care my father lavished his machinery with. It was rusted, the wheel wells were covered in mud, the front fender was dented and the grill of the radiator had wet leaves smashed in between its crevasses. The chassis was outfitted with several lockboxes for tools, a large crane for winch and recovery, and a t-shaped wheel-lift that stuck out of the back, that hooked forks under the axles of the vehicles it towed. It still looked imposing though, in spite of the many years and long miles it wore on its face. The cold wind blew as I pondered its dimensions, and just how in the world I was going to master such a beast.

City Terrace is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in East L.A. The gangs that reside in that territory are extremely active, and known for their hair-triggered tempers. I stood there quietly in front of the wrecker, waiting for Raul, at the same time, wary of my surroundings, keeping a vigilant eye peeled for passing carloads of shaved headed killers. One false glance or perceived dirty look could get you riddled with hot lead. Lowered 64 Impalas and Buick Regals cruised the deep valleys and hillside passes that surrounded me on all sides. The hills themselves like great fortresses, spotted here and there with old houses, propped up on stilts, with orange and red lights glowing behind tattered and stained curtains. The youngsters of the clique would climb the steep hillsides to sit in the tall grass, away from the streetlights, and would smoke P.C.P and drink tequila, and shoot their pistols into the cloudy, wet sky, or at the glimmering lights of downtown, that sat like a jeweled crown before them, hoping to bust a window or smash out a light, or kill some puto, huero punk… their eyes wild and manic, and free.

After what seemed like a long while, Raul pulled up and parked. He got out of the car and walked across the street towards me. Before he reached me, he went into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys and threw them to me and said, Get in, you’re driving, I caught the keys and looked at him with a grin, a grin that said ‘ha-ha…. wait, you are kidding right?’ He just looked at me with a straight face. Come on motherfucker, let’s go! Climb on up, we got a tow to do,

Whoa, whoa, wait up, I’ve never driven a semi before! Are you nuts?

No time to learn like the present fool, let’s go, it’s really not as hard as you think, I gazed up at the Pete. It suddenly looked ten times more imposing and impossible than it already had. Raul climbed up into the passenger side door and buckled himself in. I put one foot up on the wet, slick metal step and slipped, slamming my shinbone into the diamond grate, spiky surface of the stair, gouging a nice tear in my pants and digging deeply into my flesh.

FUCK, mother fucker! I shouted. The cold air made it hurt all the more.

Be careful dude, take your time with this beast and she’ll do you right, warned Raul. I could feel the blood running down my leg and turning cold by the time it reached my ankle, my sock, soaking it up and getting wet.

I climbed into the driver seat and stuck the key in the ignition. I looked out the windshield and couldn’t see the street under us. It seemed like we were twenty feet in the air, and I was half right about that, as we were at least ten. I turned the key to the right. Nothing happened.

I think the battery is dead or something, I said, half hoping we would have to reschedule for another night. My hands were wet and cold, and shaking from nerves.

No, you just have to push that button, said Raul, pointing at a small silver button just to the right of the ignition. It would seem obvious enough given its placement there, if it weren’t for what seemed like a thousand buttons, dials, switches and valves, splayed across the dashboard.

I pushed the button and felt everything under and around me start to shake and rumble. The sensation wasn’t entirely new to me, just a distant memory, one of my father taking me along with him on runs out to Palm Springs to deliver gas to an old service station out there. He’d pick me up in the alley behind our house, blowing his horn and making all the dogs in the neighborhood bark and howl.

A weak, mostly ineffectual warm air started to ease out of the air vents on the dash, slightly warming my fingers, which gripped at the wheel hard with white knuckles. I felt my feet warming too, as the floor vents kicked in, wafting up the smell of blood that emanated from the gash on my shin. Droplets of water covered the windshield and blurred my vision. Raul pointed to the wiper’s lever on the left of the wheel. The worn out and ragged wipers cut a swath of clarity in small triangular patterns before us.

Now push the clutch in and push the shifter into first, then let the clutch out really slow while pushing down on the gas pedal with your right foot, in equal measure. It’s not too different from a regular stick shift H pattern; it just has an extra H. You have the top H, then when you’ve shifted through that, you hit that switch on the side of the shifter, flick it down to take you through the last H, thing is, you only use that clutch when you’re coming out of first, the rest of the shifting you do through your R.P.M.’s. You rev them up to about 1200 R.P.M.’s on this gauge, he said, pointing to a small gauge directly in front of me.

When you rev it to 1200, and pull the shifter into second gear, you’ll feel it slip right in, This was another concept I was familiar with, as my father, who taught me to drive a standard transmission, had showed me this trick with his pick up truck. The procedure saved on fuel and also the life of your clutch.

Raul showed me the red and yellow dash valves that released the air breaks. A hissing sound blasted from them as I pushed them in. I pressed the clutch in and pushed the shifter into first, I gently applied pressure to the gas pedal, while letting the clutch out at the same time. I felt the beast move forward, splitting the branches of the tree that hung over us with its exhaust stacks and crane, as we rolled down the driveway, and into the street.

WoooHooo! Didn’t even pop the clutch my man, I thought for sure you would pop and stall! exclaimed Raul. We drove up and down the side streets, and in and out of the empty parking lots of the many factories and warehouses that made up the few blocks around us. He showed me how to back up in a straight line, took me through the shifting procedure, and gave me a brief tutorial on the dynamics of the combustion engine, the gauges and their functions, and on how to operate the wheel-lift and crane at the back of the chassis.

We headed to the breakdown site, jumping on the onramp of the San Bernardino freeway, heading east to the City of Industry. I got to open up those high gears and really smash that accelerator. The power this monster had was awe-inspiring. The higher I shifted, the smoother the ride, leaving all the seemingly tiny vehicles below us, in the dust. I was having fun.

Damn man, you’re a natural! You’re gonna do just fine, I can tell, it’s in your blood! said Raul. I nodded in agreement with a slight smile, but inside, it made me a bit melancholy. I thought of riding next to my father down this same highway, when I was a boy. My memories took me back to those runs out to Palm Springs, eating chocolate doughnuts out of my dad’s lunch box and drinking cold milk from his thermos. He would play old country songs on his radio as we rode on through the dusk light, over Jack Rabbit Pass and the white wash rivers that rolled under it, and the desert dwelling fun seekers, frolicking on their banks as we sped by. My father blowing his truck horn at the bikini clad lovelies sunbathing in the sand. He’d tune in his C.B. radio and we’d listen to the other truckers out there with us on the road, as they cussed and told crass jokes, calling to each other by their C.B. handles. My father’s handle was Mad Dog. He dubbed me, Super Boy.

He let me cuss at the other truckers he would be ranking on over the C.B. and we would laugh. He got into a heated riff with a guy called Big Red One.

Call him a pecker head, boy! my dad would chuckle.

Hey Big Red One, you’re a goddamn pecker head! I’d shout into the handset. My dad would laugh until tears were running down his face. I’d laugh at him laughing. Hell, even Big Red One could be heard laughing over the radio, somewhere out there in the dark.

We’d pull into the old service station. It was plain, without a name; just a half burnt out, green neon sign that said, GAS. There were just a few pumps, a garage for oil changes and tire repair, an old coke machine sitting out front, the kind you opened like a refrigerator. An old man sat inside at a cash register, loaded .38 special stashed underneath it. His hat pulled down over his eyes, tilted back in his chair, dreaming of air conditioning and Vegas show girls. My dad would go in and rouse him, getting the key for the tanks that sat buried under the asphalt, beneath the station. My father would look dashing in his uniform, flat stomach, muscle bound, pressed work pants, shirt clean and tucked in. He’d pull up the grates that covered the tank valves, pull out long tubes from their housings that stretched along the length of his tankers, and lock them into the valves at the opening of the station’s tanks. He’d pull some levers and flipped some switches and the tanker’s contents would empty into the buried tanks under the station. There were little windows on the tubes where you could see the fuel flowing into the tanks. The fuel was pink, at least in my memories. We’d sit down next to the soda machine and wait for the tankers to empty, drinking our cokes, eating sunflower seeds, and gazing up at the multitude of stars, stars that only hang over deserts, away from city lights, on dark roads like that one, visible only from old service stations, when sitting with one’s father, with a little neon, a little magic, and a little dust.

But those days were gone now, that station too, bulldozed long ago, and built over with a flashy AM-PM gas station, with an adjoining Taco Bell and Subway sandwich shop attached. The old man behind the register, dead and turning to dust in some graveyard in Barstow, maybe. The river beds beneath Jack Rabbit Pass, dried up and rocky. Urban sprawl, covering the once empty and expansive desert valleys, with beige, drab tract houses and strip malls, lit with false, electric light, dimming the once brilliant and endless constellations to a scattered glimmer. The C.B. radios replaced with cellphones, no more mad and restless banter from the lonely and weary truckers keeping company over them. And my father, dead at forty-eight from a brain tumor. It was a darker, colder time now. The road I was to travel on this night, was slicker, meaner and quicker to take your lights, drain your spirit, and burn you right down to your treads. I could feel it, even on that first time behind the wheel. Things were different now.

We arrived at the breakdown. It was located in a commercial business complex. It was a tractor-trailer with a deluxe sleeper cab. The trailer was fifty-three feet long and loaded to the hilt. You could tell by how low the frame sat on the tires, almost touching them. Raul and I went up to the tractor to get the attention of the driver, knocking on the driver side door. The door swung open, wafting a horrible stench into our faces. It smelt of sweaty balls, feet, armpits, Cheetos, cigarette butts, empty cups of coffee and rotting creamer, and a seat cushion riddled with the ghosts of ten thousand farts. Sitting there crammed between the seat and the steering wheel was a behemoth, blob of a man, with long blond hair lying across his shoulders. He wore sweat shorts, an oversized t-shirt with a Tasmanian Devil graphic on the front, stained with mustard, chocolate, and sweat. His blond beard and mustache, a faint and unhealthy hue. A far cry from the fit and military persona my father adorned himself with, this mass of cholesterol and stink was the standard of the day.

He barely looked up from the hand held video game he was playing to address us.

Hey, you guys here to tow me? I’m just going down the 710 to Long Beach. You guys can just leave me there, His words oozed out like a wet, lazy shit from is mushy mouth, through his scraggly mustache. His eyes were dead and distant as he stared into the screen of his video game, the lights and laser beams crashing and exploding within them.

Raul mercifully shut the door, not able to stand another whiff of that stench, and we got to work. He had me back up the wrecker up to the front bumper of the tractor, then had me watch as he took me through the hookup procedure. Operating the wheel-lift from some controls at the back of the wrecker, he maneuvered them under the truck and hooked them under the front axle of the downed tractor, then lifting the front of it up about three feet off the ground. We climbed underneath and he showed me how to chain the wheel lift to the axle to secure it, and how to remove the driveline from the transmission. Then we strung airlines from the back of the wrecker, to the downed tractor’s air brakes, so we could release and apply them from our truck. We did the same with the electrical, stringing power cords to a signal panel that we bungeed to the back of the trailer. These too, would allow us to operate the turn singles and brake lights.

We double checked all the connections and climbed back in the truck, this time with Raul in the captain’s chair, and me sitting shotgun. He pressed the air breaks in. The weight of the tractor-trailer shoved us forward a bit as the breaks released. You could feel its mass and volume, as we started moving forward. I glanced out the back window to see the driver, still slumped over his video game, greasy lips, salivating as he stuffed a handful of Cheetos into his gapping maw, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

We were only going a top speed of about twenty miles per hour. We groaned and creaked as we barreled up onto the onramp.

And that’s it man, said Raul, Now we just cruise along, pop on the hazard lights, kick back and make that money. Slow and low, that’s the get down. Take your time and get there safe, It didn’t seem too bad. The money was right, that much I knew. It was a bit nerve wracking pulling all that heavy machinery, the likes of which was easily a hundred feet long, but as long as you took your time and watched your angles, it seemed doable. I could feel my mind wrapping around it, shrinking it down, and rationalizing the logistics. Hell, maybe this was something that was in my blood.

Most nights thereafter were not as difficult, as most of the time I was towing much smaller vehicles. Moving trucks mostly, Ryder, U-Haul, Budget, twelve to twenty-six foot box trucks, much easier to hook up to and maneuver than the tractor-trailers. The ghoul that lived at the garage was named Kurt. He was from some shithole small town in South Dakota, and was a decent mechanic. He drove one service truck, Raul drove the other. Whatever they couldn’t fix on the side of the road, I would tow. I was learning as I went along.

I started taking the truck-driving course at Universal Truck Driving School in the early mornings, still driving the wrecker, unlicensed, at night, to stay afloat. The school was simply a fenced in, concrete yard in East L.A. just down the street from our garage. I had been sick with a nasty flu for a couple of days prior, and still wasn’t feeling a hundred percent when I pulled up for my first day of training. The instructor was a short, squat Mexican who barely spoke a word of English. He walked me over to one of the many tractor-trailers in the yard, opened the driver side door, and gestured for me to climb in.

The trucks were very old and dilapidated, and small. A guy my size could barely fit behind the wheel. They were built so long ago; the people who drove them originally, were actually smaller, no shit! Not that I’m not a fat fuck to begin with, but even the clutch, gas peddle, and brake, were cramped up against my legs, made for some far shorter jerk to operate. I crammed my self between the wheel and the seat. Neither were adjustable, and I was stuck in place. The wheel jammed into my ribs. The morning sun was beating in on me, exacerbating my fever, which hadn’t totally broken, and was still making me feel nauseated and weak. I was sweating and trying to concentrate on the unintelligible instructions being grunted at me from the teacher…

You backa da truck in a straigh line, if da trailer go leff, you turn da wheel into da leff, if it go righ, you turn it to da righ, His lips were fat and wet as he spat out his broken English. The engines from the other trucks were loud, so I was only catching bits and pieces of what was being said. Backing up a tractor-trailer was a bit different, in that the wrecker was essentially a straight truck, so on its own, with nothing in tow, it was exactly like backing up a car. Plus, the swivel of the wheel lift under the forks of a moving truck was quite different from the 5th wheel of a trailer. The angling was much different. However, that same innate feeling came over me on my first time backing up. The back of the trailer drifted left, I turned the wheel to the left and it would straighten out. If it drifted right, I turned to the right and it would drift back and keep straight. We had to master backing up in a straight line first. Then angling in from the left, then from the right, then parallel parking, the most difficult maneuver.

We then had to learn the basic working parts of the diesel engine, suspension, electrical wiring, the internal controls, gauges, switches, and air brake procedure. Once we mastered all of that, we had to go out on the road with an instructor and log a certain amount of hours. After that, it was just a matter of going to the DMV and passing their test.

I didn’t pass the first time. I didn’t pass the second, or even the third. It took me five times in fact. But I did pass, finally. And was, for a long while thereafter anyway, a Class A commercial driver, legally, and by right of lineage.

It felt good not to be worried about being pulled over, which I had been all the weeks prior to finally passing. I was operating the wrecker unlicensed, albeit, as skilled and professionally as I would be with or without certification. I was just glad to have that shield against the C.H.P. in case there was a discrepancy of any kind on my part. The cops, the law in general, is a gang, just like any other gang, out to jack you and exploit you for all they can get. Especially when it comes to automotive matters. No bigger hassle in Los Angeles, quite like automotive hassles. Moving violations, parking tickets, accidents, courts, maintenance, registration, all, a royal pain in the dick. I was solid now, ready to take on any test. And as it turned out, I was to be tested, and made to face challenges most sane men would never even consider taking on. The first of which, and maybe greatest of them all, was under a bright, white, full moon one winter night, out near the sea. I got the call on my Nextel. It was Raul…

Hey man, I got a big one for you. This is a major tow, double trailer. It’s up in Lompoc, coming back to El Monte. It’s going to take you a good two hours to get up there at least. You have to take Highway 1 all the way up. We can’t go through the scales on the 101, we don’t have the proper paperwork, and coming home, you’re going to have to cut through Moore Park to avoid the scales on your way back down south, because you’re going to be extremely heavy! Head out as quickly as you can because Highway 1 is a small road and you can’t drive very fast. So get going and call me if you have any issues!

I was half asleep and only taking in a small bit of what was being thrown at me. There are few things harder than dragging one’s self out of a warm bed in the dead of a cold night to face such undertakings. The best thing to do was to just jump to your feet, shock yourself. It was harder to lie there, lollygagging. I leapt to my feet, went down the hall to the showers, turned the water on nice and hot, and got in. I didn’t have time to luxuriate, just enough to shock the system, splash around and wash the crust from the corners of my eyes. As I walked back to my room to get dressed, I could feel the cold air rushing in from the hallway windows, and realized I would definitely need to layer up, especially if I was going to be near the ocean. The air near the sea in the California winters can be icy.

I put on my thickest pair of jeans, woolen socks, boots, a thermal undershirt, a t-shirt, a hoody, a flight jacket over that, and a knit beanie for my bald head. I got in my car and drove to the 7-Eleven for a big, steaming, hot cup of blueberry flavored coffee and a few creamers, then to where we kept the wrecker. Raul rented a space near me in a tow impound lot on Santa Fe, right underneath the Santa Monica freeway. It only took me about five minutes to get to it, if we got a call. But the problem wasn’t the distance from my room to the wrecker, it was maneuvering it out of the lot, which was jam packed with repossessed cars, or cars belonging to people who didn’t pay their parking tickets, or dusty, dented wrecks sitting on flat tires, windows smashed, interiors filled with dried leaves and garbage.

They were crammed into every corner of the lot, sometimes surrounding my wrecker on all sides. We’d often have to call the owner of the lot to have one of his men come down in the middle of the night, and pull some cars out of our way so we could get out. On this night, though it was a tight squeeze, I was able to inch out, slowly and methodically, until I was free of the gate. I turned the corner onto the onramp headed westbound toward Santa Monica and the Pacific Coast Highway.

I reached the 10-freeway/PCH interchange in about 20 minutes. I swooped down onto the coastline under the moon, white, bright and large, looming over the choppy ocean, glimmering whitewash falling shore side, in foaming, glorious clouds of salt water, crushing into the sand. The heater was warm, too warm in fact, so I rolled the window down and let the bitter cold rush in, mixing with the heater on full blast, the warm of it keeping my toes nice and cozy, clear up to my chest from the dash vents, while the salty ocean wind poured in, blasting my face and keeping my tired eyes watering and awake. I could see the silhouette of Santa Catalina Island out on the dark horizon, and the offshore oilrigs that lined the coast, spotted all over with harsh yellow lamps, like little jeweled towers glistening in the black ocean. It was late so the highway was wide opened, and quiet. I cut into the coves, blowing by under the cliffs of Malibu to my right, leering quickly into the soft, warm and balanced lights of the opulent homes, sitting on stilts over